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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28243794">Home Sweet Home</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muccamukk/pseuds/Muccamukk'>Muccamukk</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Band of Brothers (TV 2001)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Civil War, F/M, Friendship, Homesickness, Love Letters</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 18:00:40</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,003</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28243794</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muccamukk/pseuds/Muccamukk</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When Shifty had a moment's peace, he liked to write letters home.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Shifty Powers/Original Female Character(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Heavy Artillery Holiday Exchange 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Home Sweet Home</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoraxAviary/gifts">CoraxAviary</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For those not familiar with the US Civil War, this story takes place in the middle of the Vicksburg Campaign (December 1862 to July 1863), when General U.S. Grant was trying to find a way to capture the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg so that the Union Navy could control the Mississippi River. Grant's early attempts did not go well.</p><p>Easy Company's position as a mixed-state special forces infantry unit is a bit tenuous, but is plausibly in line with tactics used during that campaign.</p><p>"Home, Sweet Home" by John Howard Payne was the single most popular song in the Civil War, and was sung by soldiers on both sides.</p><p>Thank you to Anthrobrat for beta reading. You're a star!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Dear Dot, it's been a downright peculiar kind of winter out here in Louisiana."</p><p>When Shifty had a moment's peace, he liked to write letters home. They weren't letters written on paper—no way to send them, even if anything he had to say was the kind of thing a man could put in the mail—but letters that just lived in his head. Some of them were filled with things he was fixing to someday whisper in her ear, and some others he figured he wasn't ever going to tell a soul, never mind putting them to paper.</p><p>He didn't figure on it having been a noticeable habit until Sergeant Lipton settled on a log behind him, and flat out asked him what he was thinking. Well, it wasn't flat out. Lipton was as much of a gentleman as God made, and first he sat in silence for a spell, and then he commented upon the weather, which was rain again, and finally he ventured to inquire what it was that filled Shifty's thoughts when he sat there so quiet for so long, even when he wasn't on watch.</p><p>Shifty had a notion that Lipton worried that he was somehow troubled, soldier's heart, some were calling it, especially after that last fight, when they'd been pushed back hard, and the whole Union push into Mississippi looked about like it was fixing to fall to pieces. It still sort of looked like it might.</p><p>He didn't want to aggravate the man, so Shifty told him about how he liked to think how he'd put all this in a letter home, if he could.</p><p>Lipton studied that for a spell, as they both stared into the thickets of the Yazoo River, which was much more like a trackless swamp than a river, in Shifty's opinion. At least it was late enough that the mosquitoes had finally settled out some. "I write my wife," Lipton said, finally, "Ma too. You have to be careful what you say, but that's no trouble."</p><p>They'd all had that speech from Captain Winters enough times: don't go jawing on about being in a special company, don't tell your folks the general's plans, or your sweetheart about where you've been.</p><p>"Ain't that." Shifty considered what else to say, but in truth there wasn't a whole lot to it. "Not much of a way to get mail down to Virginia no more. Not much for my folks to say about getting a letter from a Blue Coat, neither."</p><p>"I can see the problem," Lipton said. He patted Shifty on the shoulder sympathetically, and they turned the conversation to snaring rabbits. Shifty liked that about Lipton: he cared about every man in the company, but he wouldn't push when a fellow didn't want to talk. He wasn't rough on the Southern boys, either, never mind his state had made itself out of nothing just to stay in the Union. Even with all that Lipton never rubbed the other Dixie boys noses in it, like some of the Yankees did, calling them Rebs and other names less fit to mention.</p><p>Even that night, some new kid from Philadelphia was sitting at the campfire, and asked why the hell Popeye was wearing blue not gray, and it was only Lipton's arm around Popeye's neck kept him in place.</p><p>That Italian, Guarnere, punched the replacement in the shoulder. "Private Wynn here, he's got an almighty love of the Union, don't he?"</p><p>"That's right," Lipton said, and Popeye shrugged like he didn't give a damn one way or another. The replacement had the sense not to ask any of the other guys about why they'd signed up. The company was a double volunteer unit, where a fellow had to have enlisted of his own free will, and then he had to have volunteered for special duty on top of it. The boy from Philadelphia must have done it the same as the rest of them, and Shifty supposed he ought to respect that, for all that it meant another damn Yankee in his company.</p><p>Shifty kept his peace and stared into the fire, thinking on how he'd describe these men to Dot, and all the other folks back home, but especially to Dot. He wished he could have her eye sometimes. She always had a way of turning things on their heads so they made a whole new kind of sense. He definitely wanted to show her the rifle the army had seen fit to give him. Shifty was pretty sure he could pick a brass penny clean out of the air with it, and if he could do that, she'd be able hit a squirrel right though the eye.</p><p>Dot would have a thing or two to say about uppity replacements, and how they talked about the Rebs, but then she had a thing or two to say about the Rebs herself.</p><p>"Dear Dot, I been studying the question, and the way I figure it, it don't matter why a soul joined up. Love of union, hatred of rebels, to free those slaves, on account of your friends. It's all the same in the end."</p><p>"When do you think the old man'll let the reins off us?" another replacement asked.</p><p>The veterans exchanged a look, and Guarnere rolled his eyes, but Talbert was willing to explain to the kid about how a sensible man didn't put an army in the field in winter, not unless his men were forty feet tall so as they could wade through the eighteen feet of mud that made up most Southern roads this time of year.</p><p>"Well be sitting pretty here 'til all them flowers is blooming," Guarnere concluded, which didn't best please the replacement, but would suit Shifty down to the ground, even if that ground was the boggy bank of the Mississippi bayous.</p><p>At the next fire over, George Luz struck up a sentimental song, and soon the whole camp had taken it up.</p><p>It was only too bad the General didn't agree with his enlisted men. Shifty supposed the Union had a powerful need to take control of the whole river, and about the only way to do that was to find a way to move gunboats through a swamp. Shifty wouldn't have figured that was possible, but it turned out the General intended them to cut their way through, come both hell and high water.</p><p>Hell came before high water, as near as Shifty could see it, at least that would be how he'd put it in a letter to Dot, and he was one of the lucky ones.</p><p>Captain Winters picked a handful of men to detach to the Navy's ironclads as they struggled to find a way down the Yazoo to the Mississippi proper. They sat on the tops of the boats and picked off alligators or Confederates before they could cause any trouble, while the less fortunate sat below and used corn brooms to sweep all manner of critters off the decks and rails.</p><p>The ironclads paddled in circles, filling the sticky swamp air with coal smoke.</p><p>"Dear Dot, that Irish fellow, Joe Toye, says he ain't joined the Army just to become a Marine, and I find myself inclining to agree with him."</p><p>Actually, Toye put in a few extra words before and after "Marine," and yelled it while sweeping a snake as thick as his arm into the black water below the rail.</p><p>"Could be doing that," Shifty said, pointing with his chin at the contrabands ahead of them. The escaped slaves were about chin-deep in water, trying to saw a fallen tree out of the way. It looked freshly dropped to Shifty: the Confederates had worked out what the Union Navy was trying to do, and were doing their best to be aggravating about the whole thing.</p><p>"Could be in my damn tent," Toye countered, "waiting for fighting weather."</p><p>Shifty shrugged and kept his eyes on the thicket around them, watching from left to right and then from right to left, his ears and eyes tuned for any sign of trouble. He wouldn't admit it to Toye, but in his attempts to describe all this, he himself had just about run out of words that were fit for a lady to read.</p><p>Shifty shouldered his rifle, stilled himself, and picked a panther out of the tree above them. It clung to the branch for a moment, then toppled and fell to the water with a great splash. Shifty watched it sink, then tore open a screw of powder with his teeth and started to reload. He could be ready to shoot again in under a minute, if pressed, but didn't see much reason to hurry. The way he saw it, this boat of theirs would be struggling through the mud until the Word was Revealed, with no progress to show for it.</p><p>By the end of the first day, they weren't so much men as creatures made of clay, and more recently than Adam. They tried washing their clothes in the river, but that was as much mud as water anyhow. Little wonder half the army was down with either malaria or some manner of griping guts.</p><p>"Dear Dot, got three possums today, enough to fill a pot, so got some chow in us that ain't salt beef and hard tack left over from that war with Mexico."</p><p>This was how they were supposed to live. Their company was supposed to leave the supply lines behind and cut deep into enemy territory, living off the land as they went, setting fire to every rail depot and manufacturing plant they came across. Travel light, fast, and hard, that's what Captain Winters said, and if the man had had a cuss word in him, he'd have sworn enough to shame the sailors. Instead, he'd just laughed in a way that Shifty had to admit he found downright unsettling.</p><p>Lipton found Shifty sitting in his under things, staring into the forest again. "Still writing up those letters, huh?" he asked.</p><p>Shifty nodded.</p><p>"I've been thinking about that," Lipton said. He dropped into a crouch next to Shifty, and without looking at him, held out a cigarette. Shifty took it and lit it. From the taste, it was more sawdust than tobacco, but it was kind of Lipton to offer what little he had.</p><p>"That so?" Shifty asked. "Well that's mighty big of you."</p><p>"My wife's from Virginia," Lipton said, and Shifty nodded. A lot of families had been cut clean in half when the state split in two. "Most of her family's still there, down in Franklin County."</p><p>That wasn't that far from Shifty's Ma's people, and he said so.</p><p>"See, that's what I thought," Lipton said, though when Shifty had mentioned that, he didn't recall. "She still gets mail through, friend on one side of the border, friend on the other, you know how it is."</p><p>"Believe I do," Shifty said, and he tried to still his heart like he was settling in to take a shot, but his heart still raced. If Mrs. Lipton could get letters through to her Ma...</p><p>Lipton finished what he'd been thinking: "I couldn't do much, but I could pass a short note along, if you liked. It would have to be plain enough to pass muster on both sides of the line."</p><p>"Well, now, I declare," Shifty said. He didn't think it was likely Ma could get Yankee newspapers and their casualty lists that far into Virginia hillcountry, and certainly no Union Army telegram would make it that far. She had no way of knowing if her second-born son was above or below the earth. He looked at Lipton to tell if he was playing some kind of joke, though that had never been the man's style. It was hard to make out much of his expression in the dusk, but his posture read sympathy and kindness. "I could just about hug you, sir."</p><p>"You can if you like, boy," Lipton said, and now his teeth flashed in the dark as he grinned, "but maybe put some trousers on first." He reached over and squeezed the back of Shifty's neck with his big, powerful hand, and well, when Shifty thought of it, it was near as good as a hug.</p><p>Trouble was, now that he actually could put pen to paper, it seemed like all the things he could and could not say jumbled up inside him until they were just as tangled as the jungles of the Yazoo.</p><p>"Dear Ma," he'd write, and then think about all the things that had happened and all the things he'd done since he'd ducked up past the line into Kentucky, and falter.</p><p>"Dear Dorothy," he started on a fresh piece of paper, the one to Ma having been so poured over that it'd turned the color of river water and run the ink. Dot would be easier to talk to, he reckoned. She'd always been easy to talk to, or rather, easy to walk the woods with and only say the words a fellow needed to say, which often didn't work out to be that many.</p><p>He tried to picture where she'd be and write the letter like he was just sitting on her front porch in the high cabin, though by now she'd have moved down to the hollow for the winter, no longer queen of the mountaintop. If he'd been Smokey Gordon, he'd have been able to write a poem for her in that line, something about crowns and flowers and the sky.</p><p>They were called back to duty, more of the business of trying to navigate a fleet down an unnavigable river.</p><p>"Dear Dot, I've been thinking maybe them Copperheads aggravating Mr. Lincoln is right in what they say about the General having lost his ever loving mind."</p><p>As the ironclad chugged forward, Shifty watched the jungle pass and thought on how to sum up everything that had happened to him in the last year and some. He thought about him and Popeye and the handful of other Southern boys having to scrap with the Yankees in training, and how after the first time they'd come into real fire, who'd hailed from what state didn't seem worth more than a cuss. He wanted to tell her how shooting a man felt, how different it was from shooting a possum or even a bear, or maybe he just wanted to tell someone, but then he wasn't sure of that himself, or of how he felt about it. All strange and mixed up inside, that's what he was. He was afraid to tell her that it troubled him that when this was done, he mightn't be able to sit next to her and understand what she was thinking, and have her understand him.</p><p>"Darling Dot, what if this big old war turns me into a man you can't love?"</p><p>But he couldn't write that, or any of the other things. Strange how being able to send a letter clammed a man right up.</p><p>"I'm just finishing a letter to my wife," Lipton said that evening. He left the comment open, but Shifty shook his head.</p><p>"I'm still studying on what to say, sir."</p><p>"Your ma just wants to know you're alive, Shifty." It could have come down hard, an implication that Shifty was simple—which some men did think on account of his quiet nature—but from Lipton's tone, Shifty thought he understood.</p><p>"I reckon I can just about write that," Shifty told him, and went to do it, but the letter he wrote was a poor stilted thing, just a few lines about how he was alive and hadn't been wounded. He missed them. He hoped they were well. "Please do me the kindness of passing my regards on to a certain Miss Campbell," he said at the end, then signed.</p><p>In a fit of regret, he thought about a post script just for Dot, but then spent so long struggling over what to say, that in the end he just folded the letter and gave it over to Lipton.</p><p>Shifty reckoned if he gave Gordon an ounce of tobacco, he could get a poem to send to his sweetheart, and maybe that would serve him better than his own words. He had a good laugh considering how that would go over with Dot, and Popeye gave him a look that suggested Shifty might do well to go to the surgeon's tent and ask after quinine for his fever.</p><p>But then Lipton came in, and the look on his face made Buck Taylor ask him what the word was.</p><p>"The old man's had enough of making soldiers into ditch diggers," Lipton said, and paused as Guarnere whistled fit to bring the sky down. "He's cutting us loose."</p><p>A series of catcalls and whoops filled the room, burying Guarnere and Lipton. Shifty smiled to himself. It would be good to do the work they'd trained for: to move silently through the woods and come up all of a sudden on a rail depot or supply cache, and then vanish just as fast, fire and consternation in their wake.</p><p>He started to think about how he'd write this to Dot, stopped himself, thinking on Lipton's warning. Well, he thought, maybe all this wasn't something he'd ever be able to get down when he put pen to paper, but he could still study on how he might say it later. He fancied those imaginary letters helped put some peace in his thoughts.</p><p>"Dear Dot, seems like we've got more fighting ahead of us, and truth to tell it scares me real bad, but it's work that must be done if I'm to get back to you."</p><p>Maybe it wasn't as good as having Dot right by his side, to talk to and hold his hand, but it was a little like having her there all the same.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Kudos totally make my day, and I very much appreciate comments of every length, percentage of emoji, and level of coherency.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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